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Iberian Sprint: Day 7 Seville
Soundtrack: “La Isla Bonita”, Madonna Our last full day in Seville. We started with a little wandering the local streets, a bit of shopping. As luck would have it, the nearest barbershop to out apartment was the eponymously names The Barber of Seville. I’ve been holding off on the shaving so that I could get a shave here, and when they said they could fit me in at midday it was perfect timing. I just hoped there wouldn’t be any singing, or at least I wouldn’t have to sing. We found a little place for breakfast not too far away, down a side street and while they had an English…
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Iberian Spring: Day 6 Seville
Soundtrack: flamenco clapping and stomping For our first full day in Seville we booked a food tour, a mix of culture, history and hopefully good things to eat. We met our guide P under Seville’s controversial Parasol or Setas (mushrooms), a huge wooden structure that dominates one of the old squares. The square has featured a marketplace for hundreds of years, but about 15-20 years ago the authorities decided to jazz the place up, held a competition that was won by a German architect, and the result was an over budget structure now known as the mushrooms. From here we headed off into the market under the mushrooms for a…
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Iberian Spring: Day 5 Lisbon to Seville
Soundtrack: “Cross the Border”, Icehouse Portuguese trains are confusing. Well not so much the trains themselves, just the systems in place for catching them. Yesterday we had a the adventure of the identical tickets that didn’t work identically (what’s possibly even dafter is these tickets are apparently rechargeable, but it seems that once the get pre-loaded with one type or another that’s it). I may have found the Paris metro annoying from the challenge of finding the right station entry with the ticket machine, but once I had a ticket at least it seemed to work okay everywhere. Portugal, not so much, and that was just an introduction to trying…
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Iberian Spring: Day 4 Lisbon
Soundtrack: “Swimming Horses” Siouxsie and the Banshees Our last full day in Lisbon, and we’d booked a food tour to make sure we got a taste of just about everything that one muse consume in Lisbon. It was a walking tour, a mix of history and culture with stops for food, and we were promised at least 17 different tastes of Lisbon (to be honest I can’t count to 17 in Portuguese, so if I go through listing stuff and you count it as less than 17, please don’t tell me). The tour info said to eat a little something before the start, as the first couple of stops were…
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Iberian Spring: Day 3 Lisbon
Soundtrack: “Six Months in a Leaky Boat” – Split Enz / “Folsom Prison Blues” – Johnny Cash (both preferably sung in portuguese fado style) While our Lisbon bed is a bit firmer, the pillows aren’t great, so I was awake early with a sore neck (and a touch of heartburn, likely from the copious amounts of cheese consumed yesterday). I used the time looking at nearby breakfast options that might have something gluten free on the menu, found a couple of possibles that might do something gf other than a couple of eggs. In the end my research wasn’t required as L had already picked out Chez Bea as they…
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Iberian Spring: Day 2 Istanbul to Portugal
Soundtrack: “The Four Corners of the Earth”, Weddings Parties Anything Slept pretty well in a very soft bed. Woke a few times, having no idea what the local time was, but eventually was too awake to go back to sleep bout 30 minutes before I’d set my alarm. I find it a little depressing when I wake and reach for my phone, only to have it cheerfully ask me if I want to turn off my upcoming alarm. The answer is almost always “No, I want to go back to sleep until it’s the time I’ve decided is early enough to get things done, even with allowing extra time so…
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Iberian Spring: Day 0-1; Perth, Kuala Lumpur, Karaburun
Soundtrack: every song by every band about spending time in airports and travelling (on repeat) So it begins again. Having spent 4 months back in the real world of day jobs, traffic, kicking against the pricks and generally just doing what has to be done these days, it’s time to dust off the passport. It’s been a long few months, so this break is very welcome. It’s a crazy old world out there. Flight tracking maps have a couple of vey obvious gaps, and we’re heading right through those to the other side. We’ve had to do some last minute flight changes to keep out of the way, including changing…
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Buns2025: Days 14-18 – Belfast > Singapore
Soundtrack: “Departure”, R.E.M. Filling in the last few gaps from a couch in Nyungar Boodjar, home at last. My final morning in Belfast was full of rain. I had a plan: check out of hotel, take my case down to the Central Train Station and store it for a couple of hours, go get breakfast and last minute souvenirs, then head back and take the bus straight from the station to Dublin airport. Nothing that a little rain would affect. Belfast Central Train Station doesn’t have luggage lockers. Nor does it have a nice and easy ramp to get to it, just steps. For all I know the lack of…
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Buns2025: Day 13 – Belfast
Soundtrack: “Down among the dead men”, Flash and the Pan Titanic. But first, the quest for breakfast. I wanted to find whatever a traditional Northern Ireland breakfast was, to collect the full set. With no handy potato cake company to be found, I went seeking a pub or traditional looking café, though hindered by my eSIM being slow and crap. I was further hindered by NI licensing laws, that mean pubs don’t open until 11.30am on weekdays, something I learned from a chap who was tidying the footpath seating of a pub I found. He told me that the couple of Aussies they had on staff also thought the 11.30am…
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Buns2025: Day 13 – Dublin > Belfast
Soundtrack: “Teenage Kicks”, The Undertones One last morning in Dublin, time for breakfast and last minute shopping. I made the rookie breakfast mistake of trying somewhere different, and not the Potato Cake Company. The result was an okay, but definitely not as good full irish, that lacked personality and character. It’s a travel dilemma, do you keep going back to a place that you know is good, or try different places to get a feel for what the food is like in general. I like to try mixing it up most of the time, but admit there are risks. Saw a very tall spire, called “The Spire”, though not sure…
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Buns2025: Day 12 – Dublin & Cork, mostly Cork
Soundtrack: “Irish Rover”, The Pogues Miraculously awoke with functioning hearing. Dublin’s public transport includes buses and trams (there might be suburban trains too but as I’m not needing to go to far haven’t looked into these). It also has two major train stations for Irish Rail services to other towns and cities, if you want to head south it’s Heuston, north is Connolly. Both stations are named after folks who fought in the 1916 uprising, where while the Irish lost, the UK leaders were basically assholes and their heavy handed response improved support for the independence movement. Today I’m heading south, so Heuston it is. It’s a pretty station, not…
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Buns2025: Day 11 – Dublin
Soundtrack: “To here knows when”, My Bloody Valentine Well I kinda managed to take it easy today. Started off with breakfast near the banks of the Liffey at the Irish Potato Cake Company, who even though they were flat out (apparently South African rugby fans like potato cakes, who knew) put together a decent full Irish breakfast. Potato cakes filled with beef and bacon and cheese, black pudding, grey/white pudding, fried egg, soda bread, beans, accompanied by a pot of strong tea. Not bad indeed. While I’m yet to sample a full Northern Irish breakfast, I will say that I think across the British Isles the full Scottish is the…
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Buns2025: Day 10 – Paris > Dublin
Soundtrack: “Army of Me”, Bjork/808 State Woke early with a mission to get my laundry done before hotel checkout. Part of the reason for picking this hotel was the close proximity to the laundromat, as clean underwear for me is as essential as nicotine to the locals. I felt like a seasoned traveller being able to navigate the weird central payment thing without assistance, which is good because, aside from a small gang of school kids who were using the space as shelter from the morning drizzle, I was the only one there. It was an untidy pack, the clean laundry bag just went straight into the case, but there’s…
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Buns2025: Day 9 – Paris
Soundtrack: “Red red wine”, Neil Diamond Last full day in Paris, a day to madly run around the Ile de la Cite mostly. The sore throat turned into an irritating dry cough without much effort, certainly not helped by it being pretty frigid cold (daytime temps hitting a balmy maximum of 6 degrees) plus never being more than about 1 metre from someone smoking. Time for evaluating a couple of stereotypes. Does everyone in Paris smoke? Pretty much. Certainly more than many other places I’ve been. Vapers carry a powerbank so they can recharge their suckers. Smoking seems to be banned from inside public buildings, so every doorway is crowded…
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Buns2025: Day 8 – Paris
Soundtrack: “Cemetery Gates”, The Smiths Sadly it seems the crowds in the Metro have got me, and I can feel the first hints of getting a cold. The Paris Metro system, generally seems to work okay, once you work out how the ticketing goes. Took me a while, it all hinges on little paper cards that can be recharged. In theory it can work on phones, but after installing one app, then the app that needed, then yet another app that something needed, I hit a wall of it also seeming to want me to create another account for something else. So instead I found a machine that would spit…
